I was talking to an author I really respect about producing video content, and he said that putting comedy into video is hard because there’s no audience feedback, but after a little bit of testing it gets easier. That made me think of a new challenge and the goal is simple: for the next seven days, I’m going to put out one YouTube video each day in order to learn the medium.

Introducing the YouTube Comedy Challenge.

Pictured: Graphic Design.

My hope is that one of these videos is YouTube gold, but even if that doesn’t happen, lessons are sure to pop up.

According to Josh Kaufman, author of The First 20 Hours, the most important thing to do when creating art is to make a lot at once. Here’s a story from his book (originally from Art & Fear) that perfectly explains it:

The ceramics teacher announced on opening day that he was dividing the class into two groups. All those on the left side of the studio, he said, would be graded solely on the quality of work they produced, all those on the right solely on its quantity.

His procedure was simple: on the final day of the class he would bring in his bathroom scales and weigh the work of the “quantity” group: fifty pounds of pots rated an A, forty pounds a B, and so on. Those being graded on “quality,” however, needed to produce only one pot – albeit a perfect one – to get an A.

Well, come grading time a curious fact emerged: the works of highest quality were all produced by the group being graded for quantity. It seems that while the “quantity” group was busily churning out piles of work and learning from their mistakes, the “quality” group had sat theorizing about perfection, and in the end had little more to show for their efforts than grandiose theories and a pile of dead clay.

Therefore, in order to create YouTube comedy, I must become YouTube comedy. New Videos will be posted below as they go live.

Monday:

Tuesday:

Wednesday:

Thursday:

Friday:

Saturday:

Sunday:

I hope you enjoy this, and I look forward to hearing any and all feedback on these videos.

-Alex

P.S. By the way, it’d be cool to see YOU do a challenge! Come up with something cool and post about it in the comments, or even better, leave it as a video response to one of the above YouTube videos.